


Bonds

by Huggle



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Angst with a Happy Ending, Awesome Jessica, Hurt Castiel, Miscarriage, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-28 12:42:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7640626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Huggle/pseuds/Huggle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean only goes to Stanford to see Sam's ok.  He has no idea that Sam's girlfriend will end up being such an important part of his life, of his family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bonds

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the fabby ackles_trash who kindly prompted me to help me through my writer's block, and asked for Dean and Jess being BFFS in a Destiel AU.

The first time Dean saw Jess, he wasn’t exactly sure. 

Looking back now, he figures that was envy and anger. Sam had quit them, taken himself off to Stanford. Dean wanted to be happy for him, told himself again and again that Sam had made the right choice. But the right choice had taken his little brother out of his life, and Dean felt his absence like an aching open wound.

There was a part of him, a part he loathed with no limitation, that figured Sam would try it and maybe hang on for a few months out of sheer stubbornness. Then he’d figure it wasn’t for him. Being in one place all the time, a rigid schedule, trying to fit in among people he just wasn’t like.

Then he’d come home.

But when Dean drove out there, to check up on him, to see he was still alive since there hadn’t been a lot of phone calls or texts, and he saw Jess he realised Sam had a reason to stay that wasn’t an inability to admit he was wrong.

He’d decided not to announce his presence, then. This was about making sure Sam was ok, or so he told himself. It wasn’t about some crazy fantasy he had that Sam would see him and run at him and they’d hug and Sam would admit what a little bitch he’d been and Dean would reassure him it was ok to try but it was also ok to change your mind. Then Sam would pack his bags and they’d get in the car and go.

But Sam was still sharp. It was going to take more than a few months at law school to change that. If anything it had made his instincts better. He only had himself to count on now, so they had to be.

He was heading back to the car, insides hot and sour, when Sam came up behind, tripped him and sent him sprawling in the dirt.

“Hi, Dean,” he said. 

Dean rolled onto his back and glared up at him. “Yeah, hi, you little jerk.” He held out his hand, and Sam took it like a doof, and then he was on the deck next to his brother.

“Fool,” Dean said, and got up. He hauled Sam up next and pushed him back to look at him. He was different and not different, and Dean wondered how much of a change that girl had made him in. Maybe something he couldn’t see yet.

In the end, Sam had coaxed him back to their apartment, and Jess had cautiously welcomed him. She’d picked up pretty fast that Dean wasn’t too keen on her, and Sam had glared at him a few times during that evening.

When it was time, reluctantly, for him to go, Jess had found a moment to take him aside.

“You know, he doesn’t have to choose between you.”

“Between us?”

“You. Stanford. A future. You’re his brother, Dean. You’ll always be part of his future.”

“While he’s miles away.” He hadn’t meant to say that, but it was out and Jess looked at him sadly.

“He talks about you non stop,” she said. “Dean did this one time, Dean would love that. You should meet him. You think miles are going to make any difference?”

By the time he drove away, he felt less like Sam had moved on, and more that he’d just…moved out. And not really that far.

**

The following year, he hit a rough patch. The security firm he’d been working for went under, and even though he could work as a mechanic there weren’t a lot of those vacancies around either.

But Jess came through for him. She knew someone who knew someone and that someone had a friend with a number of business interests. One of them was a garage in need of some decent help.

A week later, Dean was hired and had to relocate out to near Sam and Jess. Sam couldn’t have been happier, and Dean wondered if Jess was some kind of witch and had somehow orchestrated the whole damn thing – not that he was complaining.

He wasn’t complaining either when six months after that his boss asked him out on a date, but at that point he became completely convinced that Jess had powers. 

Dean drunkenly told her that same thing on a double date a few weeks later, by which time he’d accepted that he wanted Castiel in his life forever, and had expressed gratitude that Jess was only using her magic for good.

She’d always had a good laugh and he enjoyed hearing it.

He just hadn’t known that night would be the last time he’d hear it for a while.

**

Being a nurse, Jess knew the signs, and she knew what to expect and she knew how long it would take to recover.

None of those things really helped, because losing a baby was losing a baby no matter how much you knew or didn’t. Dean was grateful then that he’d had to move closer. All he could do was be there for her when Sam couldn’t, because he was working and because medical insurance didn’t cover everything, and it certainly didn’t cover household bills. Cas helped, and Dean borrowed strength from him to help prop his brother and sister in law up, to keep them fighting. 

More than once, he’d held Sam as he broke his heart, trying to make sense of a senseless thing and again all Dean could do was be there for him. Let him get it out, hug him in silence as Sam grieved hard enough that Dean wasn’t sure he wouldn’t just crumble apart.

But he didn’t, and Jess didn’t, and Dean didn’t. Dean didn’t because once he’d drained himself holding up Sam and Jess, he went home to Castiel and Cas took care of him, and made sure he didn’t neglect himself.

Helped him keep himself together so they could all start over again tomorrow.

If Dean had any doubt that he and Cas were meant to be, that he loved the guy more than he’d ever expected to love anybody, he knew better now.

**

Jess got better, and she and Sam tried again, and two years after that she and Sam had a beautiful little boy. John Henry Winchester.

Dean couldn’t believe he was an uncle; he immediately started teasing them about all the things he was going to teach his nephew that his mother and father wouldn’t, until Cas promised he’d make sure Dean didn’t educate John Henry in anything too inappropriate.

Dean remembered thinking: challenge accepted, and even then forming plans in his head not only about all the fun things he was going to introduce his nephew to, but the ways he could rope Cas into helping.

Later, he’d wonder if he’d just forgotten how shitty life could turn out.

**

The hell of it was, that the fight wasn’t over anything. Not really. Nothing so important that he should have let it prevent him keeping Cas from storming out.

But he was stubborn – they both were. And even though the rain was lashing down, Dean had let Cas go. Had watched him snatch up the car keys from the table, had known he was upset and still turned his back and listened to him slam the door behind him.

An hour later, Jess had to call him to tell him Cas had been brought into the ER. He’d driven down there as fast as he could given the weather, and his heart ached when he saw how bad it was. He’d let Cas go out into it. 

When he got to the hospital, she was waiting at the desk for him. She took him through, and Sam was in the room with Cas.

He was on a ventilator, cut and bruised and stitched up and so fucking pale that Dean wasn’t sure he was actually still alive.

Sam told him what had happened, not that Dean couldn’t imagine. Someone had stepped out in front of the car, according to the police, and Cas had swerved and lost control. He’d hit another vehicle, and his own car had flipped over a few times.

The prognosis wasn’t great, but Jess took over then and afterwards it was her who held Dean as he broke apart and prayed to a God he guessed wasn’t listening to let him swap places with the person he was about to lose.

**

Sam had always been the one with faith. He believed, not in a going to church way, but in there being a higher power that saw the struggles people went through and helped when it was possible, when it was needed.

He’d tried to comfort Dean with those words when all else seemed to have failed, but Dean had snapped back at him. Cas needed help now, three weeks in a coma and four days after the doctors had spoken to him again about organ donation and turning off life support machines.

Dean had chased them out of the room.

But Sam stood his ground. He didn’t say very much after that, and Dean was glad. He didn’t want anybody telling him there was a magical recovery just around the corner. He didn’t want anybody telling him there wasn’t, either.

All he wanted was to sit with Cas until he either woke up or left completely. Until then, Dean wasn’t really interested in what anybody else had to say.

**

It took a year for Cas to get back on his feet, and even then they both knew he’d be using crutches for the rest of his life. But at least he’d have a life, they would have a life.

Right now he was sitting on an easy chair in Sam and Jess’s back yard, holding John Henry on his lap while the boy was distracted with a colouring book.

“How are his pain levels?” Jess asked. Sam had been trying to grill some burgers, and Dean had shown mercy to him and the meat and sent his little brother off to mix up some salad instead.

Dean risked a glance at Cas. Even now he got tired, and Dean had learned to read his boyfriend’s body language. Cas seldom admitted to discomfort, but Dean could spot when his back started to hurt. He’d become adept at finding ways to get Cas to rest, take his meds, even endure Dean running him a hot bath and sometimes sharing it with him.

The one thing Cas couldn’t handle, really, was feeling vulnerable. Helpless.

Dean never thought of him as that, but he could understand Cas’s frustration.

“Manageable, most days,” he said. “And then every now and again he’s climbing the walls. Not that he’ll admit it. Stubborn ass.”

Jess gave him a sharp look. “Well, pot, kettle. And how are you coping?”

Dean shrugged. “I’m not the one who nearly totalled myself along with my ride.”

She cocked an eyebrow at him, and he surrendered.

“I got him back. I could have lost him either way, that night. Car accident or not. But I didn’t. I don’t know what I did to be so damned lucky, Jess. I don’t deserve him but he doesn’t seem to know it.”

Jess slipped her arms around his waist, and rested her cheek on his back. “I love you,” she told him. “But my husband clearly got all the brains in the family. If Cas didn’t think you were worth it, worth everything, he’d be with somebody else. But he isn’t, Dean. He’s with you.”

Dean risked a glance over at Cas. He was pointing something out to his nephew, and the boy laughed. Cas did too, open and honest, and something hit Dean hard, then. 

He’d come so close to not having Cas in his life.

“Yeah, he is,” he said, and Jess squeezed him a little harder.

**

He hadn’t expected Cas to say yes, but he did. The wedding wasn’t lavish – neither of them had much family, or much interest in doves and forty tier wedding cakes – but they made up for it with the honeymoon.

Maybe Vegas wasn’t everybody’s idea of a romantic location, but to Dean it was a regular family thing, even if he and Sam hadn’t visited in a few years now. Cas was family, and Dean wanted to share it with him.

They took tons of pictures, especially of the fountains at Jess’s request, and Dean posted them on his Facebook page. Or rather Cas did, when Dean almost posted a different set of pictures that were definitely not for public consumption. 

What the hell, they were newly weds. 

Jess liked every single one, and sent back a picture of John Henry starring in wonder at his baby sister.

 _Have you thought about it_? she asked, in a private message. 

Dean glanced over to where Cas was watching the strip from a table by the window, waiting on Dean getting ready so they could go out.

 _Maybe_ , he sent back.

He could almost imagine Jess rolling her eyes. 

_Well, I hate to point it out to you, Dean, but you’re not getting any younger_.

He sassed her a little over that, and then put the phone down so they could go. But instead he found himself watching Cas. Some part of him still felt this was tenuous at best. That despite what Jess had told him, and Cas had backed that up by telling him the same damn thing, at some point his husband was going to wise up. Or Dean would screw up and drive Cas away. 

He didn’t deserve Cas. He certainly wasn’t worth him. 

But Cas was still with him. Despite everything that had happened before, Dean finally was happy and he wanted a chance to share that with more than just Cas.

Truth was, they weren’t getting any younger, but he had no idea if Cas would be onboard with the idea of adoption or not. 

As it turned out, he was.


End file.
